“My mother would have gawked in wonder at the spices in your cupboard, Leo.’’
“Simple fare can be challenging, too, Talon. A spit of beef must be dusted lightly with salt and pepper at the right moment, then graced, perhaps, with a kiss of garlic just before presentation.”
Talon grinned. “My mother would never have understood presentation.”
“You’ve seen only the barest glimpse of it, boy,” said Leo. “What we do here is wasted upon commoners for the most part, and even those lords and ladies who stop by on their travels would count our fare rustic compared to the tables at which they’ve dined in the great cities.
“The noble tables of Rillanon and Roldem are each night piled high with the efforts of dozens of cooks and hundreds of kitchen whelps such as yourself. Each plate is graced with just such a portion of this dish, just such a portion of that delicacy. There is an art in this, boy.’’
Talon said, “If you say so, Leo. Though I’m not sure what you mean by ‘art.’ We have no such word in my language.”
Leo stopped stirring his own reduction sauce and said,
“You don’t?’’
Talon was fluent in Roldemish and now found himself being corrected only on pronunciation and occasionally on his delight in profanity, which seemed to amuse Leo, irri-
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tate Robert, and outrage Martha. The Orosini were comfortable with sex and other natural body functions, and Talon found it oddly amusing that describing defecation or the sex act was considered “bad” in Roldemish society.
“No,” said Talon. “The closest the Orosini tongue can get is ‘graceful’ or ‘beauty,’ but the idea of doing something just to do it is . . . not something I grew up with.” Talon had come to terms with the destruction of his family over the last year. Rather than the terrible pain it had given him, now it had become more of a dark memory that haunted him from time to time. The desperate anguish was gone, for the most part. Learning to do new things was part of the reason; and Lela was the rest.
“Well, then,” said Leo. “You learn something new every day.’
Talon agreed. “We have”—he corrected himself—“had art in some of the crafts the women practice. My grandmother made patterned blankets that were prized by everyone in the village. Our shaman and his acolytes would make prayer . . . you don’t have a word for it, circles of patterns of colored sand. They would chant and pray while they worked, sometimes for days, in a special tent that they would put up and work inside. When they were finished, the entire village would gather to see the work and to chant as the wind took the prayer to the gods. Some of them were beautiful.” Talon paused. “Those paintings Kendrick hangs in the dining room . . .”
“Yes?” asked Leo.
“I wish some of my grandmother’s blankets or the sand prayer-circles could be remembered like that, hung on a wall for people to see. They were beautiful.”
“An eye for beauty, young Talon, is a gift.” Leo said.
Just then, Lela walked into the kitchen.
“And speaking of beauty . . .” muttered Leo with a grin.
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Talon glanced at the girl and smiled slightly. His people could mask their feelings around strangers, but he felt now that the kitchen staff were his family and everyone knew of his relationship with Lela. He had slept in her bed almost every night for the better part of the last year. Close to sixteen years of age, a man by the standards of his people, he would have been wed and a father by now had his village survived.
Lela returned his gesture with a smile.
“To what do I owe this pleasure?” asked Leo. “Is the washing done?’’
“Yes,” she said pertly. “Meggie and Martha are folding the last of the dyed bedding, and I came to see what needed to be done here.’’
“Of course you did,” said the cook with a chuckle. He moved Talon gently aside, dipped a spoon into the sauce the young man was preparing, and tasted it. He stared off into space reflectively for a long moment, then said,
“Simple, yet . . . bland.” His fingers danced across the small jars of spices before him, picking up a pinch of this, a dash of that, which he added to the sauce. “This is for chicken, lad, slowly roasted chicken. It is a bland meat, not full of flavor like those lovely partridges and turkeys you bring home from the hunt. Those require a simple sauce to bring out the bird’s taste. This sauce needs to give the bird flavor.
Here!” He poked the spoon at Talon’s lips. “Taste!’’
Talon did so and nodded. It was exactly the sauce he had been trying to make. “So I should have used more spices, Leo?’’
“By twice, my boy, by twice.” The cook put down the spoon and wiped his hands on his apron. “Now, be a good lad and go and help Lela wash vegetables.”
Talon nodded and went over to the large wooden sink attached to the rear wall of the kitchen. It had a drain that 9261.01 3/13/03 12:53 PM Page 88
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cleverly went out through the wall and emptied into a small culvert that ran along the base of the building, then into a pipe under the ground and eventually into the cess pit Kendrick had dug beyond the outer wall of the courtyard.
He hefted a bucket of cold water and stood there, pouring slowly while Lela washed the freshly dug vegetables. It was the first of the spring crop, and the thought of fresh carrots, radishes, and turnips made Talon’s mouth water.
“Why the sauce?” asked Lela. “We don’t have any guests tonight.’’
“That’s why,” said Talon. “Leo decided that since we had no one to complain about the sauce, he’d let me try another one.’’
“You must be making progress,” Lela observed. “He didn’t throw this one across the kitchen.’’
“True,” said Talon. “You people can be strange at times.’’
“We’re strange?” She flicked water from her fingers at him as he put down the bucket. “From what you’ve said about your people, you’re the strange one.’’
Talon’s features darkened. “It hardly matters. I’m the only one left.’’
She tried not to look amused. “Ah, I’ve hurt your feelings.” Playfully, she kissed his cheek. “I’ll have to make it up to you.’’
Instantly his mood lightened. “How?’’
She spun away from him. “Clean up the sink for me, and if you come to my room tonight, I’ll show you.’’
Lars entered the kitchen carrying a large quarter of beef. “This is the last of the winter’s storage,” he announced. “Cold room is empty.” The cold room was an underground storage area Kendrick had built. It was frozen solid like everything else during the winter, and any provisions put in it were also frozen quickly. But in the 9261.01 3/13/03 12:53 PM Page 89
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spring it was slow to thaw, keeping anything inside frozen until spring was past and into summer and keeping things very cold from then to the next snowfall.
Leo said, “We’ll have to plan a trip to Latagore. We need to buy cattle as well as provisions.”
Talon said to Leo, “May I go?’’
Leo scratched his chin for a moment. “Don’t know, boy. That would be up to Robert, I assume. I’d be glad for the company, but usually I go with Kendrick or one of the lads.’’
Lars hung the beef on the hook, pulled out a large knife, and began to cut the meat. “Why do you want to go, Talon?’’
“I’ve never been to a city,” said Talon. “I’d like to see one.’’
“Well, then,” said Leo. “I’ll ask Robert what he thinks about it.’’
As Talon finished cleaning up the vegetable waste left in the sink by Lela, h
e considered which was making him feel the most anticipation, visiting Lela after supper or visiting a city.
__
Talon watched as the lake appeared as if by magic once they crested the rise. They had come down out of the higher reaches of the sprawling forest of Latagore, known as the Greatwoods, into rolling hills and through half a dozen small valleys until they had entered a deep ravine, cut through by a small but fast-running river. The landscape to their left was blocked from their view by a rising cliff face of stone and hard-packed earth, from which rose stubborn brush gripping for all it was worth. Off to the right, the land fell away rapidly, revealing the river gap, and in the 9261.01 3/13/03 12:53 PM Page 90
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distance there was a hint of blue which must surely be the Great Lake of Latagore.
Talon was fascinated by everything he saw and was content to ride in silence. Which was a good thing, given that Caleb had been selected to go to market by Kendrick, for reasons not given to Talon.
Talon had lived at Kendrick’s long enough to have puzzled out a few things about the odd relationships between those who worked at the inn and those who stayed there. Kendrick owned and ran the inn, of that there was no doubt. Robert held some position of authority, relative to Kendrick, but Talon wasn’t quite sure what it was. Robert and Pasko would leave the inn, for weeks at a time—once for two months—then return and reside there for a while.
They were currently leaving on another journey and would be gone from the inn by the time Talon returned.
Talon had tried to understand the relationships at the inn in terms of his own people for quite a while, until he decided that trying to do so was proving to be an impediment to understanding. He knew Kendrick had a son somewhere, who was rarely mentioned. He knew Leo and Martha were man and wife, but without children of their own. He also knew that Lars and Meggie were occasional lovers, though they seemed to be going through one of their many periods of barely talking to one another. And he knew that although everyone else considered him Lela’s man, he was still unsure what Lela thought about it. He had puzzled out other relationships among the servants at the inn—those who resided either at the inn itself or on one of the nearby farms Kendrick owned in order to supply the inn with vegetables. But much of it still seemed alien to him; despite feeling some kinship with the kitchen staff at Kendrick’s, he felt isolated, deprived of the traditional ties of family and clan.
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He turned his mind away from that; dwelling on his lost past only led to despair and he knew he must make the best out of what life offered him. He watched the lake grow in size as they cleared the woods. Then, as they crested another rise, he saw the city of Latagore.
The midday sun threw the city into sharp contrast: edges and lines, shapes and contours. Talon’s eye almost refused to define the chaos of it; then order began to emerge. Kendrick’s had been the largest man-made structure he had seen so far, and the sheer scope of the city nearly overwhelmed his senses. The city rested upon the shore of an inlet, miles across, which gave it the appearance of having been set down by some giant hand in a crook of the shoreline.
Caleb glanced over and saw Talon agape. “What do you see?’’
Talon knew that question. Robert asked it all the time, as did Magnus when he was tutoring Talon. It wasn’t about his impressions or feelings, but rather the detail of what he observed: facts, as Robert put it.
Talon instantly became analytical. “The city has a wall around it, extending into the water . . . I’d judge a hundred yards or more into the water.” He narrowed his eyes.
“There’s a large building in the middle of the city that rises high enough to overlook everything for miles. I don’t know what it’s called.’’
“It’s called a citadel. It was once a castle erected to defend this lakeshore. The city grew up around it.’’
“There are five large . . . things that stick out into the water.’’
“Docks.”
Talon’s eyes wandered for a moment, and then he was struck by the size of the lake. Surely this couldn’t be just a lake. It must be a sea.
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Caleb’s voice jerked him out of his reverie. “What else?’’
Talon began to list the details that appeared to his almost supernatural sight. Each time he encountered something alien he would struggle to describe it, Caleb would supply the word, and he would move on.
As they passed down the road, heading toward the plain upon which the city rested, Talon lost his vantage point and was forced to rely upon memory. When they reached a stand of trees which cut off all sight of the city, Caleb said,
“You did well. You missed things, but you’re new to this business of paying attention.”
“Paying attention to what?” asked Talon.
Caleb smiled—a rare occurrence—and said, “Why, to everything. You pay attention to everything.”
“Why?”
They worked their way along the road, through the woods, and past a meadow as Talon waited for his answer.
At last Caleb said, “When you hunt, to what do you pay attention?”
“To everything,” answered Talon. “The direction of the wind, the scents upon the air, the sounds of the woods, to anything that has left tracks.’’
Caleb nodded. “Always think of yourself as being on the hunt.’’
“Always?” asked Talon.
“Always.”
“Why?”
“Because it’ll keep you alive,” said Caleb.
They rode in silence for another hour before reaching a crossroads and an inn. It was an hour after midday, and Caleb said, “We’ll rest the horses and eat here. Then we’ll be in the city by supper.”
Talon had no argument. They had spent two days on 9261.01 3/13/03 12:53 PM Page 93
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the road, and while sleeping under the wagon had been no burden, he welcomed the idea of a hot meal.
The inn was a tiny place, a way stop for those few people who either found themselves just a little too late in the day to reach Latagore or who, like Caleb and Talon, were stopping for a midday meal. The sign above the door showed a man holding a pitchfork in one hand and a large mug in the other. The paint on the sign was faded, but Talon could see that the man’s expression was one of sublime happiness.
“What is this place?” he asked Caleb quietly as the wagon ground to a halt.
“It is called the Happy Farmer Inn.’’
Hearing the wagon, a boy appeared from out the back and listened as Caleb instructed him on how to take care of the two horses. As the wagon was empty, the horses were still fit and required only water and some hay. They would need more rest and grain on the long climb back up into the hills with the wagon loaded.
Caleb led Talon into the inn and crossed to an empty table in the corner. He removed his black slouch hat and adjusted the sword at his side so that he could sit comfortably at the table, then motioned for Talon to sit down opposite him.
A middle-aged woman with an agreeable manner approached and asked their pleasure. Caleb ordered a meal and ale for both of them and sat back to observe the other customers.
The common room was quiet, with only four other men taking their midday ease. Two were obviously traders of some fashion, portly men in sturdy but finely fashioned travel clothing. The other two sat at the next table, heads together, speaking quietly. They appeared to be fighting men of some stripe; both wore simple clothing—tunics, 9261.01 3/13/03 12:53 PM Page 94
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trousers, and overjackets—but no jewelry was e
vident to Talon. However, their boots and weapons were well cared for, which Talon took to mean they spent a lot of time walking and fighting.
Food was brought, and Talon and Caleb ate in silence.
The meal wasn’t as good as what was served at Kendrick’s, but it was filling, and the young man found the ale satisfactory.
Before they had finished, Talon saw all four other men rise and leave together. After they had gone, Caleb asked,
“Who do you judge them to be?’’
“Two merchants on their way to Latagore, with two guards to accompany them.’’
“A fair assumption. Though I wager something more was in the wind.’’
“What do you mean?’’
“I mean it’s not unusual for guards to eat near their employers, at a separate table, as those two did, but they seemed intent upon a topic they wished their employers not to overhear. They spent the entire meal in deep conversation.”
Talon shrugged. “I’m not sure what this means,” he said.
“It means nothing, except that it was not ‘business as usual’ for the guards. One didn’t touch his meal.” He indicated the table where the two guards had sat, and Talon saw that one plate was indeed untouched.
Talon had served enough guards and mercenaries during the year at Kendrick’s to know that most of them ate whatever was in front of them as if it might be their last meal. “All right, Caleb. What do you think it means?’’
“There was no wagon in sight either in the stableyard behind the inn as we approached, or on either side of the building, but there were four horses being looked after by the boy who came to take our wagon.’’
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Talon reflected upon what he had seen and what he knew of traveling merchants. “So, this would mean that those two merchants were traveling to buy goods in Latagore?”
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